The asteroid 2024 YR4 (like the one shown in this artist’s concept) are dim in visible light, but the infrared light it gives off means the James Webb Space Telescope will be a powerful tool to study it. NASA/JPL-Caltech In December, the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), located in Chile, identified an asteroid they … Read more
Whenever someone brings up Lana and Lilly Wachowski’s body of work, The Matrix is always at the center of the conversation. Maybe Speed Racer and Cloud Atlas get some mentions thanks to their vocal followers, but their spacefaring epic Jupiter Ascending is typically swept under the rug. A critical and financial disaster, most people wouldn’t … Read more
Dinosaur fossils found in southeastern Australia reveal a unique ecosystem unlike any other in the world. The research, published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, describes a hierarchy of predators in Cretaceous Australia which is unlike ecosystems anywhere else. Aerial view at Twin Reefs fossil site in Bunurong Coastal Reserve. Supplied. The fossils were unearthed … Read more
Some of our Solar System’s moons have become very enticing targets in the search for life. There’s growing evidence that some of them have oceans under layers of ice and that these oceans are warm and rich in prebiotic chemistry. NASA’s Europa Clipper is on its way to examine Jupiter’s moon Europa, and the ESA’s … Read more
Gateway’s HALO module heads to the U.S., on its long path to orbiting the Moon. Preparations for Lunar Gateway are starting to come together. Thales Alenia Aerospace engineers recently began a series of checks on the HALO (Habitation Logistics Outpost) core module. Currently at the company’s Turin, Italy facility, the module is set to head … Read more
Life as we know it needs water, but life as we don’t know it may run on concentrated sulfuric acid. The chemistry of life as we know it wouldn’t work in a place like the huge Saturn moon Titan, where it’s so cold that ice behaves more like rock, or in the acidic clouds of … Read more
View larger. | Here’s a view of Earth on September 21, 2005, showing the entire region of Antarctica with land ice and its seasonal sea ice. A new study shows that Earth’s ice caps are a rare event in the planet’s history. Image via Andrzej 22/ Wikimedia Commons/ NASA (Public domain). Earth has two ice … Read more
A flash of powerful X-ray light coming from a nova explosion on a white dwarf star has caught the attention of astronomers using the Chinese–European Einstein Probe. This nova is especially exciting because the white dwarf star on which it is found exists in a particularly unusual binary star system. The high-energy flare was spotted … Read more
There are a lot of ways for dead stars to blow their tops. Astronomers discovered this explosive diversity when they assessed 3,628 exploding white dwarfs during a next-generation sky survey conducted using the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) between March 2018 and December 2020. That means that this dataset of nearby supernovas is several times larger … Read more
Two of the most powerful people in the world continue to push the “stranded astronaut” narrative. In a recent interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, SpaceX Founder and CEO Elon Musk and President Donald Trump were asked about the administration’s plans for space, their commitment to landing astronauts on Mars and the plan to “rescue,” … Read more